Tag: book reviews

Review – The Kiwi's Egg

Posted February 24, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Kiwi's Egg by David QuammenThe Kiwi’s Egg, David Quammen

Having thoroughly enjoyed several of Quammen’s other books, I’m a bit sad that I didn’t really feel enthusiastic about this one — especially because I do have a great interest in Darwin, the early theories of evolution and the reaction to them in society. I mean, we’re still seeing that reaction now: I know people who don’t believe in evolution forming new species; I know people who are not convinced by the proofs we have; and various people somewhere in between. And this is an idea that’s in our general consciousness, unlike — for example — electron shells.

But the long descriptions of the incubation of Darwin’s idea are, well, long. And often totally speculative, alas. We have so many records of Darwin, but of course they don’t necessarily answer the questions we really want answered. All in all, this just… didn’t captivate me as I would’ve liked, despite reminding me that by all accounts I think I quite like Darwin as a person as well as a scientist.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Annihilation

Posted February 23, 2015 by in Reviews / 8 Comments

Cover of Annilation by Jeff VanderMeerAnnihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

This review could easily just be: what the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?

As I was just saying to my partner, who is reading these books at the same time as me, the concept isn’t that strange in many ways. You can explain it as a straightforward SF or horror story. It’s just the way VanderMeer writes it: it’s so insidious, so sideways; it creeps up on you. The depersonalisation of the nameless characters helps with that, and the half-said things. The contradictions and confusions and the way that you can never be sure anything has happened. In most SF stories, at least you get a solid answer: this character is controlled by aliens. This character is an alien. This character is turning into an alien. This character is going to have an alien burst out of their chest.

But VanderMeer makes you consider all possibilities at once. They could all be true. Or none. Or something else even weirder. It’s that thing that effective horror/suspense can do, where it’s more scary because you can’t define exactly what the discomfort is.

I’ve said all that and not even touched on the characters, which are normally the most important thing for me. But when it comes to a lot of New Weird type stories, I’ve found that the places in which the action occurs are often characters in themselves, in some weird way. Sometimes more vivid and alive than the characters themselves. There’s definitely a sense of the characters here being more roles, archetypes, cyphers, than real people. And yet there are things you can hold onto: the biologist, her husband… to an extent, the surveyor: I wanted to know what she was thinking, how she was coping.

If you don’t like mysteries and you don’t like weird, this is absolutely not your kind of book. But it is very intriguing, in a slow building kind of way. I want to know.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Remnant Population

Posted February 22, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Remnant Population by Elizabeth MoonRemnant Population, Elizabeth Moon

Remnant Population is a quiet sort of SF book. It’s more along the lines of, say, Ursula Le Guin than Lois McMaster Bujold or David Weber: at least, there’s very little by the way of epic space fights, and much more about people. Mostly just one person, alone. I loved that the protagonist is an old woman; the ending, with the recruitment of old ladies, seemed like a bit of a joke even so, but I liked that this is very much a defence of the worth and importance of the elderly, and particularly elderly women.

I liked that the aliens really are weird and nothing like us — that all our exo-scientists’ assumptions were just way out. I think if we do find other life out there, it might be like this: we might not even know what we’re looking at. They might learn in radically different ways (sorry, Pinker, Chomsky); they might mature at different speeds. We base our assumptions on carbon based mammals…

Perhaps the unrealistic thing is how easily it’s settled. You require a set up like Le Guin’s Ekumen for that, and this seemed more like a society run primarily by corporations. It didn’t seem like cooperation would be so easy… But even then, there’s a hint at how that can be done; the People join in the commercial enterprises of the rest of the universe.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one; it’s not going to be a new favourite, but it was a good read.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

Posted February 21, 2015 by in Reviews / 3 Comments

Cover of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. SayersThe Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy L. Sayers

It’s fortunate for me that these books are so familiar to me by now, because I got distracted by other books in the middle of this. It’s not my favourite of the bunch, which helps to explain why; I do like the conflicts between Parker and Peter that’re brought out by the nature of the story, the awkwardness between them as Peter has to suspect one of his own friends. That’s perhaps the best part of this: the characterisations of those two as they try to balance friendship and duty; Peter’s struggle with himself and his own honesty.

The ending is one of those awfully convenient, gentlemanly ones where Peter could bring the person to trial, etc, etc, and then warns them and offers them suicide instead. I can never quite decide what I think about those endings: they give Peter a kind of out, so that he doesn’t have to do the ungentlemanly thing. Which is a bit unfair, really.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Man Who Went Into the West

Posted February 20, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Man Who Went into the West by Byron RogersThe Man Who Went into the West, Byron Rogers
Review from June 8th, 2013

This was… honestly, a bizarre read. R.S. Thomas seems to have been a man of contradictions — funny, stern, hard, tender, quiet, garrulous. At one moment he’s refusing to answer questions about his poems and the next, this:

‘Anyway, they wanted this scene in which Thomas came out of his church and walked down the path. Everything was set up and he appeared in a full surplice. But whether he’d become fed up, I don’t know, for he suddenly raised his arms and started to run towards them, shouting, “I’m a bird, I’m a bird.” It’s not on film. Either the cameraman was too stunned or Thomas was running too fast.’

This is a chatty sort of biography, and not a strictly organised one. I don’t think Byron Rogers even tries to present some kind of unified view of Thomas. He makes it seem impossible, even. He made me laugh at Thomas and feel sorry for him, sometimes in the same moments, and he opened up his poetry to me that bit more in the ways he selected sections to quote.

I loved reading this, and I have a bizarre, amused love for R.S. Thomas. I don’t know whether it would have appalled or tickled the man to know that a little English-speaking Welsh twenty-three year old like me feels this way about him: it’s a tough call to make, it could go either way.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – The Iron King

Posted February 19, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Iron King by Maurice DruonThe Iron King, Maurice Druon

G.R.R. Martin refers to this as the original Game of Thrones, and you can see why. The same types of characters populate it, to a large degree — except I’m not sure I found any of Druon’s portrayals to have many redeeming features, whereas I’ve liked a couple of characters in what I’ve read so far of Martin’s epic. This is, of course, not a work of fantasy, but based on real history; how closely, I’m not sure, as my knowledge of the period is mostly based on British politics, and this largely takes place in France. It offers a convincing world, anyway: just the way you would want the period to be, with torture and curses, weak princes and calculating counsellors.

I have seen quite a few fairly negative reviews of this, which I think might come from people expecting something more fantastical based on Martin’s comment, and possibly also from people who can’t stand the translation (it’s very workmanlike and functional, I think). But I quite enjoyed it: I don’t know if I’ll pick up the rest of the series, simply because there are so many books and so little time, but I enjoy reading it. If there’s anything lacking, for me it’s more sympathetic characters, or at least more of an inner life beyond who they want to sleep with.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Creation

Posted February 18, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Creation by Adam RutherfordCreation: The Origin of Life/The Future of Life, Adam Rutherford

This book has kind of a fun design: the two sections are separated by flipping the book upside down. It’s a gimmick, but it’s kind of a cool design anyway. The topics are pretty interlinked, but you can read one half of the book without the other, or read them in either order; whatever you like. One half covers how life came to be, and one half covers the attempts to create life (or should that be recreate?), via genetic engineering, etc.

It’s an interesting bunch of issues, and Rutherford handles it well. His tone is informative, without being stultifyingly boring: he has some moments of humour which, while not laugh-out-loud funny, did provoke a snort or two. He writes engagingly, and those it is definitely an overview of the topics not really meant for a professional audience, he doesn’t shy away from discussing the complex ideas and different theories. None of it was really surprising or groundbreaking to me, because biology and genetics are big areas of interest for me, but it would make a good introduction for the intelligent reader, or a refresher to bring you up to date.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Rose Garden

Posted February 17, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Rose Garden by Susanna KearsleyThe Rose Garden, Susanna Kearsley

I didn’t have to read much of this to realise that Susanna Kearsley’s work is going to be the perfect replacement for the comfort reading I got all the way through in the last two or three years (Mary Stewart’s romance/adventures). It has the same sense of place, the beautiful descriptions of landscape, and the same sort of heroine: female, curious, about to be swept up in bigger events than she’d ever have expected. And better: this is explicitly fantastical, where most of Mary Stewart’s books were more mysteries, sometimes with hints at fantasy.

And better again, whew, we don’t have first cousins getting married at the end.

It does start off with kind of a slow pace, and Eva is only rarely involved in actual action, despite the backdrop of free trading and other such types of derring-do. And it is indeed a romance, so the ending is a happy one for most of the characters (though there’s a sadder note, too, with Eva’s sister’s husband; I was glad there was some closure at the end of story with him as well, even if it was a sadder story), and there’s plenty of romance going on — not just for Eva, but in the background. And yeah, I think Fergal and Daniel take the time travelling woman a little too lightly. They’re curious, but not curious enough to feel realistic. They both just decide to protect her right away.

But I enjoyed it anyway: it has a great atmosphere, and the writing flows well. It’s a bit like The Time Traveler’s Wife, I guess, in that I wouldn’t want to examine how the timeline works too closely lest it fall apart, but it was the ideal fluff, and it had enough substance that I cared about the characters.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Adventures of Monkey Girl and Tiger Kite

Posted February 16, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Adventures of Monkey Girl and Tiger Kite by Kai SchalkThe Adventures of Monkey Girl and Tiger Kite, Kai Schalk
Received to review via Netgalley

This is a very short ebook — I’m not sure how long in words or pages, but it was a very quick read. It’s pretty fun and refreshing, in that it has a diverse cast with Chinese and LGBT characters, it’s a superhero story dominated by female characters, and it takes none of these things too seriously — even the teenage crush, which may or may not come to something, but turns out not to be as important as friendship anyway.

It is a very brief story, the more so because it includes flashbacks to the background of the characters, but all the same, it’s cute and fun. I did feel that with a more mature writing style, it might have felt like more; you can pack so much into a short story if only you know how.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Fatale: Death Chases Me

Posted February 15, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Fatale by Ed Brubaker and Sean PhillipsFatale: Death Chases Me, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips

Someone recommended me this, based on the fact that I like noir fiction and I enjoyed Brubaker’s run on Captain America. It’s a mix of noir and horror, and just on those grounds, I don’t think it really worked for me. The femme fatale trope can be fun, but I never really got into this. Maybe it’s a bit too much of a mash-up of genres for me? And I didn’t feel that they used the form to best effect: there were so many text boxes telling me what was going on, and everything was so dark and dingy I wasn’t really keeping track of characters properly.

There was some gorgeous art, mind you, and I can imagine some people falling over themselves for this one. But not me.

Rating: 3/5

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